Islam in Puerto Rico

[1][2] The early Muslim community largely consisted mainly of Palestinian and Jordanian immigrants who arrived between 1958 and 1962.

At the time, the vast majority of Puerto Rico's Muslims lived in Caguas[3] – a city in the island's central region located south of San Juan – where they operated restaurants, jewelry stores and clothing outlets.

A storefront mosque on Calle Padre Colón in the Río Piedras district of San Juan served the entire religious community on the island during earlier years, however, today there are mosques and Islamic centers in Aguadilla, Arecibo, Hatillo, Ponce, Vega Alta, and San Juan.

Muslims first appeared in Puerto Rico in the 16th century when so-called Moriscos served as adventurers, traders, or enslaved laborers during the Spanish colonization of the Americas.

Although the number of Muslims living in Puerto Rico was probably significant, these early communities didn't survive and were soon converted to Catholicism or other more syncretic African diasporic faiths.